How to give and receive feedback

Feedback is essential for any learning experience; it provides you with information about the impacts of your actions on the outside world; information you can use to learn about those actions and how to improve them.

Feedback is also a sensitive issue: it relates directly to your individual actions, and it may touch you at a personal level (this is indicated by you becoming angry, sad, depressed, happy, etc.). This is why, in giving feedback, you should be careful to register (or anticipate) how the person receiving the feedback reacts. When you are on the receiving side, be aware that you may not really be taking in valuable information because it makes you feel insecure (or angry, or happy, or ….).

So, without becoming totally therapeutic about it, what is a good way to GIVE feedback? Here are 5 essential points:

1.      Make sure you have adequately assessed the work/actions of the person you are assessing. If you don’t put in the effort to do this, it disqualifies you from giving feedback, and the other person is better off without your comments.

2.      If you have many points of feedback, give some structure to them, and make that structure explicit to the receiver. Make sure you alternate between positive comments [‘I find this really interesting’] and critical remarks [‘I am not convinced this adequately reflects the literature on this topic’]

3.      Formulate your feedback in clear, concise points. Use sentences that make clear that you are stating your opinion, not some objective fact. [don’t say: ‘This is an unconvincing argument’, say: ‘I find this argument unconvincing’]

4.      Provide clear arguments WHY you come to the assessment that you give. Formulate these arguments in such a way that they provide pointers for the other person how to improve their work.

5.      If you have finished writing down your feedback, take a short break and then read them back, trying to assume the position of the person who will be receiving these points. You should strive to formulate them in such a way that you would be happy to receive these comments yourself, even if they are very critical about your work; this can happen because the feedback will allow you to improve your work.

It is equally important to be able to RECEIVE feedback; otherwise learning will not occur. So from that side, 5 essential points are:

1.      Make sure you read the feedback several times. Register your reaction to it. You may find that there is a big emotional reaction (either positive or negative); don’t start working with the feedback until you have regained some level of calmness. Depending on what the feedback is about (it could be your master thesis on which you spent the last 6 months), this may take up to several days.

2.      Always keep in mind that the feedback is about something you did or make, not about you as a person. This distinction allows you to learn.

3.      Read the feedback as a list of ‘things to do’ to improve your work. What does it actually entail to make the changes necessary to counter negative feedback?

4.      If you contact the person that provided you with feedback, be thankful to them. Don´t blame them for the emotions you may have felt when receiving feedback. Instead, try to involve them in thinking about how to improve your work. Ask clear questions that serve this purpose. [‘You find my literature review incomplete; I am thinking of improving it by doing X and Y. Do you think that will address your concerns?’]

5.      NEVER argue with the person who gave you feedback about the validity of a comment. If you are totally convinced feedback is not valid, then just ignore it (but come back to the point later to see if there really isn’t any value in a certain comment). If you have some doubt about it, try to eliminate this doubt by asking questions [‘I am not sure I understand exactly what you mean with comment x’], not by challenging the comment.

 And finally, accept that you will have to learn giving and receiving feedback. So you will not always be able immediately to follow these suggestions. So please be kind to your fellow students when you are engaged in the process of giving and receiving feedback to blogs.